The instructions were not complex, but they were precise, and they felt ancient. The language on the vellum, which Talos called Hermes, was a series of sharp, angular symbols that seemed to writhe if stared at for too long. Gunther, with his mind for patterns and rules, found it both fascinating and deeply unsettling. It was a syntax of power, not poetry.
They worked not in the grand, airy kitchen, but in a small, enclosed scullery at the back of the house, its stone floor and shelves of preserving jars feeling more like a laboratory or an alchemist's den. Talos had dismissed the servants for the evening under the guise of "a sensitive chemical experiment—fumes, you understand." The lie had been smooth, effortless, but Gunther, watching him, saw the fine sheen of sweat on his father's brow.
"First, the base," Talos murmured, his voice a low monotone as he read from the vellum. He uncorked a bottle of clear, odorless liquid—distilled water, purified over quartz crystals. He poured it into a polished silver bowl that was usually reserved for the presentation of roasted meats on feast days. The domesticity of the object felt profane for the task at hand.
From the leather bag, he counted out three heavy gold Hammers. "The metal of kings and the sun. For permanence and value." He dropped them into the water one by one. They landed with soft, definitive clinks that seemed to absorb the very sound in the room.
"Now, the heart of the matter." He produced a small velvet pouch. From it, he tipped out a fine, iridescent powder that shimmered with a faint, internal light, like crushed beetle wings. "The ground scale of an Emperor Lizard. A creature of pure contract and obligation." The powder hit the water and did not dissolve, but instead swirled, forming shifting, silvery patterns on the surface, like the clauses of an unwritten law.
Gunther watched, mesmerized. This was not the dry theory of his books. This was substance. This was cause and effect made manifest.
"Three drops of writing ink," Talos continued, using a glass pipette to add a jet-black fluid that bloomed in the water like a dark contract. "50 milliliters of the sap of a Truth-speaking Vine, to bind the words to your soul." This was a viscous, clear sap that solidified momentarily upon contact before dissolving into a web of fine filaments.
The mixture in the bowl was now a swirling, opalescent grey, shot through with silver and black threads. It hummed, a low, sub-audible vibration that Gunther felt in his teeth.
"Finally," Talos said, his hand trembling slightly as he held up a single, pristine white feather. "The feather of a Juridical Owl. For clarity of judgment and the piercing of law and order." He plucked the vanes from the shaft, letting them drift down onto the liquid's surface. As they touched, the entire concoction flashed with a cold, white light. The humming ceased. The swirling stopped.
What remained was a potion the color of a stormy sky, utterly still and opaque. It looked heavy, like liquid mercury.
Talos let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for minutes. He ladled the potion into a simple, stoneware cup. "It is ready."
He held the cup out to Gunther. In the dim light of the single oil lamp, his father's face was a mask of grim hope. "There will be a… period of adjustment. The texts speak of a psychic assault. You must hold fast to who you are. Remember your name. Remember your purpose."
Gunther took the cup. It was cold, so cold it almost burned his fingers. The surface of the potion was a perfect, unreflective plane. He could smell nothing, but a sense of immense potential radiated from it, a pressure against his mind.
For a fleeting second, he was a boy again, frightened of the dark in the hallway. He saw Karl's cake-smeared face, his mother's graceful hands arranging flowers, the faded hawk on the rug. Then the image of Baron Eckhardt's smug, predatory smile superimposed itself over it all. The flaw in their world was vast, and this was the patch, the exploit.
He did not hesitate. He brought the cup to his lips and drank.
It was like swallowing a winter storm. There was no taste, only an overwhelming sensation of cold logic flooding his throat, his stomach, then radiating outwards along his veins. It was not painful, but it was violently invasive. His thoughts, usually a orderly stream, became a raging torrent. Precedents and loopholes, contractual clauses and logical fallacies, all screamed through his mind at once, a cacophony of absolute reason.
…wherein the party of the first part, hereafter designated the "Grantor," shall be deemed to have…
…a failure of consideration voids the agreement ab initio…
…the argument ad hominem is a logical flaw, a weakness to be exploited…
He clutched the edges of the wooden table, his knuckles white. He could feel the very structure of his consciousness being rewired, sharpened, honed into a weapon. He saw the flaws in the scullery—a crack in the mortar that weakened the wall, the slight warping of the door that prevented a perfect seal, the implicit contract of trust between him and his father that was now irrevocably altered by this act.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.
The cold receded, leaving behind a profound and unsettling clarity. Gunther opened his eyes. He hadn't realized he'd closed them. The world was the same, and yet utterly different.
He could see the points of failure everywhere. The single, rusted nail in a ceiling beam that was the linchpin for its structural integrity. The subtle hesitation in his father's posture that betrayed his overwhelming fear beneath the mask of resolve. He could hear the faint, rhythmic flaw in the grandfather clock's mechanism two rooms away, the tiny gear that was wearing down just a fraction faster than the others.
"Gunther?" Talos's voice was tight with anxiety. "Son?"
Gunther looked at him. He saw the love, yes, but he also saw the desperation that had driven him to this, the calculated risk, the investment he had made in his eldest son. It was all laid bare, a series of logical premises leading to an inescapable conclusion.
"I am here, Father," Gunther said. His own voice sounded the same, but the mind behind it was new. It was faster, sharper, a blade freshly whetted. "The process is complete."
Talos sagged with relief, then stepped forward, gripping Gunther's shoulders. "And? What do you feel?"
Gunther considered the question. It was not about feeling. It was about perception. "I feel… the architecture of things," he said slowly, choosing his words with new precision. "I can see the load-bearing walls of an argument, and the points where pressure can be applied to make them collapse."
A slow, triumphant smile spread across Talos's face. It was the first unburdened expression Gunther had seen on him in years. "Yes. That is it. That is the power." He looked at the empty cup with something like reverence. "Now, we prepare the next one. For Karl."
—
The following days passed with a strange, dual quality. On the surface, life at the Vogler manor continued its placid, slightly shabby course. Elinalise supervised the household accounts, her brow furrowed as she found new ways to stretch the budget. Karl raced through the halls, his wooden sword terrorizing the dust motes in the sunbeams. Gunther read his books.
But now, his reading was different. He devoured texts not just for their content, but for their flaws. He found the unsubstantiated claims, the circular logic, the emotional appeals disguised as reason. He began to re-read the correspondence from Baron Eckhardt's solicitors, and where he had once seen formidable legal threats, he now saw a tapestry of vulnerabilities. A misplaced comma here, an ambiguous clause there, a reliance on an outdated land survey—it was a fortress with its gates left open, if one only knew how to look.
He joined his parents for a walk in the gardens after lunch one day, the autumn air crisp and carrying the scent of decaying leaves.
"The roses have done well this year," Elinalise remarked, touching a final, deep crimson bloom. "A stubborn show of beauty against the season."
"A testament to your care, my dear," Talos said, but his eyes were distant, scanning the tree line.
"It is a matter of efficient resource allocation," Gunther found himself saying. "The plant directs its final energies into reproduction, a last effort to ensure legacy. A logical, if ultimately futile, strategy against the inevitable entropy of winter."
His mother looked at him, a faint line appearing between her eyebrows. "That is a very… analytical way to see a flower, Gunther."
"It is the truth of the flower, Mother," he replied calmly. "Sentiment does not change its nature."
He saw the flaw in her reasoning immediately: the conflation of aesthetic appreciation with biological imperative. He saw the flicker of hurt in her eyes, and a part of him, the old part, winced. But the new, sharp mind categorized it as an unavoidable data point in a necessary transition.
Later, he found Karl trying to build a fortress out of books in the library, his small face screwed up in concentration as a tower of legal commentaries teetered precariously.
"The foundation is unsound," Gunther stated, kneeling beside him. "You are using folio-sized volumes on top of quartos. The weight distribution is inefficient. The center of gravity is too high." He quickly rearranged the books, creating a stable, squat bunker. "See? It is less grandiose, but it will not fall at the first sign of pressure."
Karl looked at the restructured fortress, his lower lip jutting out slightly. "It looked better before."
" 'Better' is a subjective assessment," Gunther explained, the principles of structural engineering and logical priority clear in his mind. " 'Stable' is an objective fact. In a conflict, facts defeat assessments."
Karl, unimpressed by objective fact, kicked the bottom book and sent the entire structure sliding to the floor with a crash. "I liked my way more!" he declared, and ran off.
Gunther stared at the scattered books. He saw the flaw in his own approach: he had optimized for structural integrity, but failed to account for the unpredictable variable of a five-year-old's will. It was a lesson. A new data point.
That night, a sharp crack woke him. He was out of bed in an instant, his heart hammering, not with childish fear, but with a cold, hyper-aware alertness. He stood by his window, listening. The house was silent. Then he heard it again—a branch, stressed by the wind, snapping from the old oak on the lawn. A simple, mechanical failure.
But as he looked out into the moonlit darkness, his new senses, stretched to their limit, picked up something else. A flicker of movement where there should be none, at the very edge of the woods. A shadow that detached itself from the others and then melted back again. It could have been a deer. It could have been the wind in the pines.
But his Lawyer's intuition, his ability to sense the flaw in a scene, screamed at him. It was wrong. The probability was low, but the consequence was catastrophic. The premise of their security was false.
He pulled on a robe and went to his father's study. He found Talos awake, staring into the dying embers of the fire, the locked chest open beside his chair. He was holding another sheet of vellum, this one for the Hunter pathway.
"Father," Gunther said, his voice quiet but urgent in the silent house.
Talos looked up, his eyes red-rimmed. "Gunther. You should be asleep."
"There was a noise. A branch broke."
"The wind is picking up. A storm is coming." Talos said.
"It wasn't just the branch," Gunther insisted, the logic assembling itself in his mind. "I saw something. At the tree line. A single observer. Reconnaissance."
Talos's face went very still. The hope that had been there days before drained away, replaced by a grim fatalism. "Are you certain?"
"I am certain the security perimeter has been breached. The probability of hostile intent, given our situation with Eckhardt and your… acquisitions… is high. We must act on the worst-case scenario."
The two of them looked at each other, no longer just father and son, but co-conspirators in a plan that was unraveling faster than they could weave it. The performance was over. The audience had arrived, and they were not there for a comedy.
"Karl is still too young for his potion..." Talos whispered, crushing the vellum with the ingredients in his hand.
"Then we have run out of time," Gunther said, the words cold and hard as stone. The final, terrible flaw in their plan had revealed itself. They had gambled on having more of it. And they had lost.